Saturday, May 06, 2006

Patriotic Catholic Church.

In the most extensive and populated country of the world, begins to be gestated once an old history. : collisions between the faith and the reason, between the absolute power and the freedom of worship, between spirit and matter. The Chinese Popular Republic, with 1, 300 million inhabitants, secular and atheist by decree (1949), has not been able to eradicate the opium of the towns (as called it, Lenin), like it was proposed among 1966-1976. On the contrary, mercy to the endeavored and persistent work of missionaries and believers (martyrs and saints), the catholic religion, has gone growing and being consolidated in China, especially in its rural zones. What perhaps themselves is due also to that the Confucianism (tempted to form gifted and with solid ethics, chinese citizens), the Taoism (mixture of …”to do not anything, so that be done all”…. with witchery and alchemy) and the Chinese Buddhism (stoic variant, that promotes the renunciation to the material pleasures), have been incapable to confront to religions based on an implacable faith, more than in the reason and the ethics. It is calculated that in the present Communist China, exist among 20 - 40 million practicing Catholics, in the secrecy. As it is known, The Vatican one broke relations with the Communist China to little to arrive to the power in 1951, with regard to the ordering of 2 Chinese catholic bishops, without subjecting to the Vatican consultation.

In the last 30 years, before the uncontrollable advance of the catholic religion, the Chinese opted certainly licenses. They established that the Patriotic Catholic Church (as they called to the official church), was in charge of the Chinese Communist Party, having legal authority to appoint its bishops. Controlled in this way they would avoid that the Catholic Church -as happened in Poland- promote social revolutions in China. To justify its connection with the Vatican, the Chinese Patriotic Church, accostumed to present 3 bishops and the Vatican choose 1 and vice versa. Custom, broken in recent years, when the Chinese PC began to present a single candidate, that of them. However, the drop that turn down the glass of water, has been the recent designation (last 10 days), of 2 chinese catholic bishops, on the part of the Patriotic Church, without the authorization of the Vatican. What promoted the immediate excommunication of the bishops and of the clergymen that consecrated them. The Vatican said that they had violated the Canon 1382 of the Code of the Catholic Law. According to the Vatican, the bishops named were more politics, that religious. As answer, the Chinese prepare now to name in some 40 diocese, more bishops. One must continue the course of the events. Not alone it is a matter of confrontation between atheists and christian spiritualists, but of a fight between the most fundamental liberties of the humans and the ferrous opposition of the most extensive ateism of the planet.